Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (72 page)

“Do you mean us to die?” she asked boldly. Maybe the darkness gave her courage.

“No, not at all. If you have the knack of casting off the backlash, I will train you
to hone that skill and nurture your fire. But even the best-trained fire mage can
die. And you must be willing to see others die, for if you make one mistake with your
catch-fires, as you will, their bodies will be served as this man’s was.”

“My bridges are burned. My home will be here, or in the spirit world.”

She took in a sharp breath. The candle took flame. She sucked in a pained inhalation;
I smelled a pinprick of ashy smoke. Light sparked in her eyes. Then a glowing thread
spun out from her like an unwinding coil and streamed into the body of the nearest
catch-fire. The man stiffened, arms rigid at his side, but the backlash was more trickle
than roar.

The girl’s lips parted, and her eyes widened. Her hands raised to press at her mouth.
The candle’s light danced along her pale skin. The rest of the world lay in shadow.

“Enough,” said Drake. “You have a light touch, as women often do. If you wish to walk
this road, you may enlist.”

She dropped to her knees so abruptly I thought she was falling, but she was just stunned.
The catch-fire relaxed as the backlash vanished. The candle burned on.

“Yes, that is my wish,” said the girl through tears.

“Remain here then, and assist with the hospital tomorrow. Under no circumstances attempt
even to light a candle, not until we have had time to train you in the preliminaries.”

“Yes, my lord. Yes!” By the way she gazed raptly at him, I saw the cage he wove: He
gave the fledgling fire mages a life otherwise denied them.

I fled to the library. It hurt to entertain the idea that Drake might be right about
one thing.

Rory still slept. Camjiata sat alone at the desk, studying a map. He did not look
up as I crept across the plush rug, for of course I was veiled in shadows.

“I can hear you moving about, Cat. Do you think I did not notice when you suddenly
vanished? Dark Ataecina! Whence comes this shadow magic? Has the Hassi Barahal clan
nurtured it close to their hearts all these years? Uniquely suited for a family of
spies, don’t you think? Or is it only you, Cat? Not cold, not fire, but a creature
as yet unclassified by the scholars.”

Fortunately, before I felt obliged to answer this salvo, all delivered in a cheerful
tone, boots sounded in the corridor. I threw myself on the couch and pretended to
be asleep as Drake walked in. The whiff of smoke made me choke.

“I have discovered another apt fire mage. Another girl.”

“You seem to prefer the girls, James.” Camjiata’s tone seemed distracted, but I heard
the edge cutting beneath his genial disinterest.

“Girls are more malleable. More grateful, for I give them a status and independence
they cannot gain elsewise. Thus they are the most loyal of all. Most of them, anyway.
Not this one.” I felt the pressure of his gaze as he looked at me. I wanted to leap
up and stab him, but Vai’s cautions and my promise to the radical cause stayed my
hand. “Women are so grievously shallow-minded. If the arrogant cold mage weren’t so
handsome and cocksure, she wouldn’t love him half as well.”

“Really, James, you must give up this unseemly obsession.”

“I care nothing for her. Angeline is far more beautiful and an equal to me besides.
But she will lead me to him.”

“If you kill him, I will be seriously displeased with you.”

Drake laughed. “And then what? Then what will you do?”

Tension stung like the snap of air before a thunderstorm breaks.

“Do you want to find out, James?”

Noble Ba’al, but I had to admire the general’s self-assurance! Drake hesitated for
so long I almost popped my head up just to enjoy the
expression that surely soured his face. Rory prodded me with his foot. I stayed curled
up.

“Without my help, your partisans would never have been able to break you out of your
island prison.”

“I am aware of what I owe to you. But I am also aware of what you owe to me. You are
a murderer, condemned by your own kinfolk in your own clan’s court of law.”

“They left me to burn after stealing my inheritance! Of course I acted to save myself!”

“Any justness in your actions does not change the fact that I brought you under my
protection at considerable risk to my reputation.”

“You promised me an army to take back what is mine.”

“An army you shall have, once my victory is assured. How long do you think you will
last without my support, James?”

“I am coming to question whether I need your support at all. My fire mages are loyal
to me because they know I am the only one who will raise them up and defend them.
They will never let any harm come to me. I used to think I needed your army, but now
I wonder if all I need are powerful fire banes. Who would dare oppose me then?”

“A constant application of terror and grief is no way to rule.” Footsteps sounded
in the corridor. “Here are my officers. Have your people ready to ride within the
half hour.”

“I shall not be patient for much longer,” muttered Drake.

The instant the sting of Drake’s presence faded from the room, I kicked Rory’s shins
and got up. The staff officers nodded at me; they had accepted our presence among
them with the alacrity of youthful disinterest. After all, they had a war to fight.
We made a meal of bread and cheese, and I was glad to have it for I suspected that
many of the soldiers got nothing. Before the sun’s edge topped the horizon, the troops
were moving north in their columns. The pops and cracks of gunfire signaled a skirmish
far in the advance.

“This knife’s edge must be walked cautiously,” remarked Camjiata when he and I had
a moment riding apart from the others. “You do understand, do not you, that if we
lose this battle today, then all is lost?”

“Because the princes and mages will crack down so hard on dissent that it will be
decades or generations before another radical movement
has a chance to rise? Or because you’ll have lost control of Drake? Never believe
I am selfless enough to sacrifice my husband on the altar of your empire.”

“Just buy me time, Cat. Do nothing rash.” He glanced toward where Drake rode amid
his company of mages, then back to me. “Had you been my daughter, you would have been
loyal to me.”

“Tara gave me the father she wanted me to have,” I said softly, but he could not hear.

The rising sun bent its rays over the landscape. The road sloped upward along a gentle
rise. Rumbling booms shook the air. A frantic blaring of trumpets, as with warning
calls, was followed by the crackling of gunfire, which at length subsided into an
uncanny quiet that made me more nervous than anything that had come before.

We turned off the main road and entered a village empty of every soul except the soldiers
moving through. On a prominence men had felled three trees that blocked the view northeast
over the battlefield. Clouds bunched up in the north, dark with unshed rain. Closer
at hand a dense mist concealed the high ground and thus the entirety of the Coalition
army. Camjiata surveyed the mist through a spyglass.

“James, the mist seems unnatural. I expected to see Lutetia’s walls from here. Can
you disperse it?”

“The mist is a fog created by cold magic. To create such an extent, across a full
mile or more of ground, means many cold mages have coordinated their efforts.”

“Can your fire magic not vanquish this cold fog, James? I’m surprised to hear it.”

“I can do anything! But it’s not worth risking fire mages so close to the lines. The
sun will disperse it in time.”

A smile teased Camjiata’s lips, as if Drake’s sullen defensiveness amused him, but
I was sure I was the only one who noticed it. “Tell Marshal Aualos to order the artillery
to begin a barrage into the mist. That will soften them and perhaps hasten the mist’s
dispersal as well.”

Messengers came and went, one after the next. Sometimes they had to wait while Camjiata
read dispatches and wrote replies for men ahead of them. Everything took so long as
soldiers trudged into position and artillery was drawn in by horses. An hour passed,
then another.

The battlefront expanded into the east, masses of men hidden by
distance but also because the mist continued to hang low, not burning off even as
the sun rose higher.

Finally the artillery began to fire in thundering blasts of sound. Smoke rose. I heard
thumps, distant cries, the screams of horses. How must it feel to stand as death fell
unseen out of the sky? How I hated this waiting! I was confident that Bee remained
fairly safe in Lutetia, but where was Vai? How vulnerable was he?

Canyons of light appeared as cracks in the mist. Figures appeared and vanished like
dreams of ghosts. With a rumble of hooves a troop of Coalition cavalry swept out of
its misty concealment. Rifle fire from the Iberian line cracked as the infantry formed
into squares to face the charge, but the horses did not crash into the square; instead,
as the cavalry circled, all the rifles went silent. Out of this chaos of stillness
and motion, crossbow bolts and longbow arrows flew with killing precision into the
Iberian ranks. In the midst of the cavalry, despite the distance between us, I recognized
Vai. I knew he would go with the first wave, put himself at risk in case the attack
did not work.

Yet it did work. The desperate Iberians broke ranks to charge with their bayonets.
As soon as the square’s tight formation began to disintegrate, a second cavalry charge
swept out of the shredding mist and smashed right into the Iberian infantry. The lines
boiled into a mass of confusion.

“A new variation on an old tactic,” remarked Camjiata to his staff. They were sweating.
He was not. “Effective not just because the cold magic kills our rifles and cannon
but particularly because their archers are superior to ours and naturally they have
many more of them. James, if you place one fire mage in each square, can that mage
then throw the backlash of their fire into the cold mages who are riding with the
cavalry? Wouldn’t that kill the cold mage’s magic and leave the rifles free to fire?”

Drake brushed strands of red hair out of his eyes. The touch of his calfskin gloves
left a smear of soot on his brow, but I did not mention it, for I did not like the
way he looked at me. “Yes, it would, and it leaves the cold mages defenseless besides,
for as long as they are acting as catch-fires, they are helpless. The best part is
that the more powerful the cold mage, the more fire he can absorb and thus the more
fire the fire mage can call. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Yet what can we most advantageously set on fire?” Camjiata mused. “The Coalition
has many more cold mages than we do fire mages. Let your people set grass fires up
the hill to keep the cold mages busy putting them out. I know you have been making
some experiments with lending fire to artillery and rifles whose combustion has been
killed by cold magic.”

“All of this my mages can do,” said Drake, but he seemed distracted as he scanned
the field with a spyglass. Several of his wife’s soldiers always stood between him
and me.

The last of the mist spun away to reveal the Coalition army deployed on the higher
ground, rank upon rank of infantry. Smoke rose in billows everywhere. I could just
barely make out the dark line of Lutetia’s walls in the distance. Thank Tanit the
city was, for now, out of artillery range.

A staff officer had left several open bottles of wine on one of the tree stumps. I
took a swallow straight from the bottle as I considered whether I should abandon Camjiata.
I knew the general had to win, yet I was so afraid of what the fire mages might do.
But what could I possibly do to safeguard Vai now that the battle had started? The
cavalry company he had ridden down with had returned to the Coalition lines, and no
doubt he had gone with them. I would never find him among the thousands and thousands
of soldiers struggling in noise and smoke and blood.

Rory was pacing back and forth along the length of one of the fallen pines like a
caged lion at the prowl. A crow sat on a branch, watching him. I hurried over and
chased it off. He offered me an uncorked bottle from which he had been drinking.

I took a swig of a harsh sack, winced, and handed the bottle back to him. “This is
awful.”

Had he been in cat shape, his ears would have been flattened to his head. “This
is
awful! This isn’t hunting. You creatures ought to settle your arguments in a better
way. Couldn’t one general challenge another for the right to stand with the pride?
Who can possibly eat all that torn meat? If it were even tasty, which man-flesh is
decidedly not!”

“How do you know what man-flesh tastes like?”

He stiffened, and for an instant I was sure he was going to snarl at me.

“Rory! Answer me!”

He took a step toward me, so threatening I raised my cane. Catching himself, he took
a step back, but by the way his lips gapped to show a hint of teeth, I could see he
was on the edge of biting or perhaps of telling me the truth. And I was suddenly very
sure that I did not want to know the answer after all.

Artillery fire boomed over us. I ducked instinctively. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“There! Look!” a staff officer shouted to be heard above the deafening rattle and
shot.

I ran back to the command group just in time to see yet another cavalry charge from
out of the Coalition lines. Smoke rose from the guns in billows. The churn of ground
between the two armies was speckled with fallen men, injured horses, and the detritus
of lost weaponry. This time, as Coalition cavalry closed with the Iberians, fire broke
out in the trampled grass around them. One rider in the middle ranks collapsed as
if shot. A second rider toppled from his horse. As more men fell and horses tumbled,
the cavalry sheared off and raced back toward their lines. A storm of bullets rained
after their retreating backs.